Star Wars with occasional sarcasm

9-disc Star Wars Blu-Ray set revealed!

The rush of fans wanting Blu-Ray details initially crashed the May the 4th site. When it finally got up and running, it began revealing images on the number of social media shares… An act which strikes me as rather sleazy.

Thankfully, I was finally able to procure some decent art, and you’ll see it above. I’m not all that impressed with the art of the individual sets, but I was never a fan of that style to begin with. The art for the saga set, on the other hand, is straight-up awful: It looks less like Star Wars and more like Precious Moments: The Movie.

Hopefully some retailer somewhere will be providing a better-looking exclusive.

The special features list audio commentary for each movie, all involving George Lucas and various notables including Rick McCallum, Irvin Kershner, Carrie Fisher and Ben Burtt, as well as archival audio.

Each trilogy has an entire archive disc… And the ninth includes documentaries including 1977’s The Making of Star Wars and three brand new ones: Star Warriors, on the 501st Legion; A Conversation with the Masters: The Empire Strikes Back 30 Years Later with George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Lawrence Kasdan and John Williams; And Star Wars Spoofs, containing footage from Family Guy, The Simpsons, How I Met Your Mother and Weird Al.

NEW! Star Warriors (2007, Color, Apx. 84 Minutes) – Some Star Wars fans want to collect action figures…these fans want to be action figures! A tribute to the 501st Legion, a global organization of Star Wars costume enthusiasts, this insightful documentary shows how the super-fan club promotes interest in the films through charity and volunteer work at fundraisers and high-profile special events around the world.

NEW! A Conversation with the Masters: The Empire Strikes Back 30 Years Later (2010, Color, Apx. 25 Minutes) – George Lucas, Irvin Kershner, Lawrence Kasdan and John Williams look back on the making of The Empire Strikes Back in this in-depth retrospective from Lucasfilm created to help commemorate the 30th anniversary of the movie. The masters discuss and reminisce about one of the most beloved films of all time.

NEW! Star Wars Spoofs (2011, Color, Apx. 91 Minutes) – The farce is strong with this one! Enjoy a hilarious collection of Star Wars spoofs and parodies that have been created over the years, including outrageous clips from Family Guy, The Simpsons, How I Met Your Mother and more — and don’t miss “Weird Al” Yankovic’s one-of-a-kind music video tribute to The Phantom Menace!

The Making of Star Wars (1977, Color, Apx. 49 Minutes) – Learn the incredible behind-the-scenes story of how the original Star Wars movie was brought to the big screen in this fascinating documentary hosted by C-3PO and R2-D2. Includes interviews with George Lucas and appearances by Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher.

The Empire Strikes Back: SPFX (1980, Color, Apx. 48 Minutes) – Learn the secrets of making movies in a galaxy far, far away. Hosted by Mark Hamill, this revealing documentary offers behind-the-scenes glimpses into the amazing special effects that transformed George Lucas’ vision for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back into reality!

Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi (1983, Color, Apx. 48 Minutes) – Go behind the scenes — and into the costumes — as production footage from Return of the Jedi is interspersed with vintage monster movie clips in this in-depth exploration of the painstaking techniques utilized by George Lucas to create the classic creatures and characters seen in the film. Hosted and narrated by Carrie Fisher and Billie Dee Williams.

Anatomy of a Dewback (1997, Color, Apx. 26 Minutes) – See how some of the special effects in Star Wars became even more special two decades later! George Lucas explains and demonstrates how his team transformed the original dewback creatures from immovable rubber puppets (in the original 1977 release) to seemingly living, breathing creatures for the Star Wars 1997 Special Edition update.

Star Wars Tech (2007, Color, Apx. 46 Minutes) – Exploring the technical aspects of Star Wars vehicles, weapons and gadgetry, Star Wars Tech consults leading scientists in the fields of physics, prosthetics, lasers, engineering and astronomy to examine the plausibility of Star Wars technology based on science as we know it today.

I’ve seen the ‘actual’ site in brief flashes before the redirect – and it appears to be Flash in a version I can’t run. (No, I can’t upgrade either.) If there are cover images lurking in that thing, I am am going to be SO pissed. There aren’t. Phew.

I was hoping they’d let us know if there were a SPECIAL special edition of the flicks, with the CGI Yoda in Episode I and other enhancements (like fixing the lightsaber color in the OT that turned all Sith lightsabers pink), but apparently that’s still unknown. Boo.

Also, sharing stuff through social media is stupid. Shame on you, Star Wars, for succumbing to this stupid trend.

The site is working now. More stuff will be revealed if people can get on there and share a link through the site. We’re at 1% right now.

Like I said on Twitter, I can’t stand that kind of thing. Particularly if there’s something major at stake like the cover art. I’ve already ‘shared’ this info with *checks stats* at least 64 people. But it’s not Twitter or Facebook, or at least not a direct link through them, so it doesn’t count? Ugh.

If there are enough folks checking to crash the official site I’d imagine there’ll be enough ‘shares’ to have everything ‘out there’ within the next couple of days. Besides, it’s not out for another 4 months, so no crazy rush.
Agree, shame there’s no SW to Jedi on there, that’s a top doc. Have on VHS, but who the heck still uses them?
Still, if we all knew the spoilers we wouldn’t all watch the show, so happy to be surprised when the big day arrives. Kind of wondering why they’ve made such a big fuss of this news at all. Like anyone with a Blu-Ray player wouldn’t be buying it even if it was a vanilla Blu-Ray release…

So far most of the documentaries sound like stuff I and probably most of us have all seen before. Not too much excitement there for me. And has all the Frank Oz work with Yoda been taken out to Empire and Jedi and replaced with CGI. If so, wrong move. I liked Episode 2 and 3 Yoda but that original version in Empire is quiet literally some of the best movie puppet work ever.

i’d buy it if it was bare bones, but was hoping for a little more detail and more new docs. i have a insane crazy SW bootleg collection and i have all those old docs on dvd already. i’m sure the quality will be better, but i was hoping for something on the same level as the Episode I DVD documentary “The Beginning”…..
‘

I’m sure they’ll re-release the blue-ray collections in a few years with better box art. They always do.

BTW, any news on cut scenes? (or is this going to be easter eggs?)

I’ve lost all hope in Lucas ever bringing back the original cuts, which is why I bought those DVDs with the low-res, non-animorphic scans that came out a few years back. If I can’t have them in high quality, at least I can have them. Maybe when Lucas dies we’ll get to see restored theatrical cuts, though I doubt it. He’ll probably write something into his will that will have all theatrical cuts burned, if he hasn’t had them burned already :)

I think we need to remember the last original version of the Star Wars films on VHS that had horrible artwork. After that, the Struzan stuff was great but it’s tired. The 2004 DVDs had horrible photoshopped posters. In comparison, this is fantastic artwork.

I’m a little let down we probably aren’t getting any of the features from the DVDs. I would like to store them away but I will have to keep out for the bonus discs.

I’m with Dunc and Paula – idea good, execution bad. Like I said yesterday, I wanted to see a single image instead of a montage… and this is halfway between the two.

Maybe they could have done a wrap-around cover with Anakin on one side and Luke on the other. The TPM teaser poster is (in my opinion) one of the best SW posters out there, and Luke gazing off into the sunset is one of the best looking shots in all the films, so you wouldn’t think they could go wrong by combining the two.

I adore all three cover art designs. I’d take almost any painting over a photo/photomontage, but I also really like these specifically. Stylized, but not too stylized; fresh, but appropriately evocative of past works. I hope poster prints are made available sans logos, though it looks like the two trilogy pieces in particular are designed with the cover design in mind and would look weird without the logos.

As for the extras… I guess none of it jumps out at me as particularly exciting. Deleted scenes, good (totally expected, but good nonetheless), but I don’t know how much of that will be new.

Toph: It makes sense to me. They need a character with an iconic look, and by iconic, I mean someone who doesn’t just have a normal human face. Something as instantly recognisable as Vader.

So out of the aliens/helmeted/otherwise odd characters, we’ve got who? Maul, Jango Fett, Grievous, Chewie, the droids, Jar Jar and Yoda. Out of those, the first three only appear in one film, Chewie and the droids are more associated with the OT, and Jar Jar is, well, Jar Jar. Yoda is the only option left.

Besides, he’s probably the second most regnisable SW character out there after Vader.

Still not 100% sure, but then again it’s about the content rather than the box art. That said, think they look fine – certain the uber-mega special box (with life-sized inflatable Jabba) in a few years time will be even better.

Wouldn’t want any of these covers as posters on my wall, but the PT and OT sets work for me. Personally they remind me a little of the old “Revenge of the Jedi” poster.
The saga cover is… Well. Less is more, I guess. And calling it understated would be an understatement. Still, there is a romantic quality to it that I can appreciate, so all in all everything’s okay. Coverwise.
As for the extras: That 501st doc is a waste of disc space, imho. Who outside the 501st needs that? The spoofs have been done to death (in the case of Robot Chicken to Palpatine’s death), 30 years of TESB is… Okay, I guess. It’s weird, though, that there is this one feature on TESB and nothing on the saga as a whole. Plus: Where are the prequels in all this? Sure, we’ve had “The Beginning” and the like, but shouldn’t there be one huge documentary on all the films?
If the Blu-rays were a game, I’d say the balance is a little off.